how restaurants can survive in cold/inclement weather

The City of Chicago partnered with an Innovation company to solicit ideas for how restaurants can survive as the weather gets too cold for outdoor/patio dining. While the "winners" will be announced soon, the various ideas themselves are on this site:

https://challenges.openideo.com/challen ... ution-list

The entrees (entries) are shown in order of how many "likes" each has received from the public. Some are practical, some wild, some jokes, but there may be usable nuggets in there for finding.

[Robin Garr]

Thanks, Andrew! That's fascinating, and very timely. As morning dropped to a chilly 58º under smoke-hazed skies, I've been wondering how the industry is going to face an Ohio Valley winter with its unpredictable Polar Vortex weeks.

My limited understanding of the restaurant industry, as a customer, is that restaurants packed to the gills can barely make a small profit.

Now you add Covid. No matter how "safe" they make things or say they are, a significant percentage of the population is not going out to eat until there's a vaccine. Take that percentage away, plus Government mandated capacity limitations in some states, plus we're in a recession/depression where disposable income is at a premium.

Packed to the gills is now practically empty.

Then add cold weather.

I hope I'm wrong, and I hope someone inside the industry posts after me with a long list of how I've got it wrong. but I don't see many current restaurants that rely on sit down dining surviving past 2020.

[Robin Garr]

I want to believe you're wrong somehow, Mike, but I can't find any flaw in your reasoning.